If an individual desires to swim for a long period of time in a pool, he or she must reverse direction at each end of the pool. This can interrupt the swimmer's swimming stroke pattern and waste valuable time. Further, if the swimmer is training for a long-distance swimming event, the actions required to reverse direction do not emulate his or her training need.
To overcome the problem of having to reverse directions, it would be beneficial to have a means for restraining a swimmer's forward motion, thereby essentially prohibiting the swimmer from reaching an opposing end of the pool. The prior art teaches several approaches to accomplish this restraint. For example, the swimmer may be tethered to a device permanently affixed to a pool deck or the side of a pool, such as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 4,529,192 or in U.S. Pat. No. 4,530,497. In a different approach, the swimmer may be tethered to a cable attached to a structure permanently attached to the pool, such as a pool ladder, as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 5,236,404 or in U.S. Pat. No. 7,104,932. Alternatively, the swimmer may be tethered to a heavily-weighted device positioned on the side of the pool, such as taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,861,675 or in U.S. Pat. No. 8,388,502. However, each of these approaches either requires a permanent fixture on the pool or requires a device that is cumbersome to move. Thus, both situations restrict the swimmer to using a single pool or training location.
Because a swimmer may not have access to a single pool, or may travel and wish to train while away from his or her normal training pool, it would be beneficial to have a relatively light-weight and portable device that can be easily transported but that can be adapted to create a device that will restrain a swimmer in a limited space. The present development provides a portable device that a swimmer may easily set up and remove from any pool.